China Mieville has made his name writing urban speculative fiction in the “New Weird” genre. His new book, The City and the City, steps away from his previous books: it’s still fantasy, but just barely. More than anything else, The City and the City is a great detective mystery. The novel takes place in modern times, in two cities somewhere in Southeastern Europe: Beszel and Ul Qoma. Beszel is the pooere of the two, while Ul Qoma is booming with miraculous economic development. The catch here is that both cities exist in the same physical space. The cities are neighbors that overlap in “crosshatched” sectors, and in those areas it is illegal for residents of one city to acknowledge the persence of the other. It is possible, in this awful duality, to live in Beszel, and never be able to see your next-door neighbor in Ul Qoma. This division is made possible because it is so deeply ingrained in the cultures of both cities, and because of a mysterious authority called Breach that polices the borders of the two cities, ruthlessly enforcing the imaginary wall between them.

Tyador Borlu is a detective on the Beszel Extreme Crime Squad, called in on a murder investigation that rapidly spins out of control. The victim is an anonymous young woman, and it soon becomes clear that, while her body was found in Beszel, she was killed in Ul Qoma. As he works through the maze-like legal systems of the two parallel cities, Borlu begins to uncover a conspiracy involving radical nationalists, unificationists, international corporations, and Breach itself. ( )

"The City" is good but frustrating. The setting concept is incredible, the descriptions evocative, but while I loved the city itself I couldn't get into the story itself. The characters, as many other reviewers have noted, were shallow and unimpressive, and several of the plot points left me cold - I finished the book still not totally understanding WHY crossing between the cities was so massively taboo.

These would have been fairly minor complaints in the hands of a different author, but I can't help but feel someone with China Mieville's talent could have done so much more with the idea. It simply doesn't stand up to works like Perdido Street Station and The Scar, although that doesn't mean isn't still a worthwhile read, if you don't mind being a bit underwhelmed. ( )

The idea is interesting but the writing had no elegance and was in fact very clumsy and awkward in places. Character development was only so-so. And I was never really satisfied with the description of how the two countries "unsaw" each other. Was it sci-fi or just brainwashing? Probably will be better as a movie than it was as a book. That said, this story does come back to me quite often since finishing the book. Like I said, the idea is very intriguing but the execution of the story left something lacking. ( )

I am still waiting for a book from China Mieville to equal King Rat or Perdido Street Station. This, while interesting, was definitely not it. But I continue to hope... ( )

If you’re looking for something off the beaten track in a mystery, then you should definitely give The City & the City by China Miéville a try. This quasi science fiction police procedural takes place in two fictional cities, Beszel and Ul Qoma, that inhabit the same physical space located somewhere in central Europe. Wherever the two cities “crosshatch,” inhabitants of each city can actually look into its counterpart. But custom and law dictate that when a citizen accidentally “sees” the other city he is committing the crime of “breach” and must immediately “unsee” that city and focus on his own. To ensure compliance with this law, an authority known as Breach functions as an overseer in both cities and exercises unquestioned control over matters involving acts of “breach.” So, when an archaeological graduate student studying at the university in Ul Qoma is found murdered in Beszel, criminal investigator Tyador Borlú of Beszel must find a way to solve the murder without breaching himself. The suggestion that a third city exists in the interstices between Beszel and Ul Qoma complicates the investigation even further.

With The City & the City, Miéville has created a work that satisfies two genres, mystery and science fiction, while leaving the reader to resolve the question of what compels a society to adhere to the rule of law. ( )